


Hunting Tigers

by Not_You



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, old fic, villains need love too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I tried my hand at writing Moriarty and Moran as deeply in love with each other, and then wrote them a happy ending because I'm sick like that.  It's a Return fic for the villainous side of things, as well as the story of how these sick bastards hooked up.  Old and possibly not up to standard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunting Tigers

I remember the last time, in a cheap room in Switzerland. We had just enough time before his appointment, clothes falling away almost unnoticed as we stumbled towards the bed. You never want something more than the last moments in which you have it. I almost felt like he was gone already, and I held him to me hard enough to bruise.

“Look at me, Moran.” He cupped my face in his hands, his voice a raspy hiss as I pounded into him. I can still remember how tight and hot he was, and the way his long legs wrapped around my waist, holding me deep inside. It was hard, but I stared into his eyes the way he wanted me to. I’m glad I did, because now I can still remember their agate green and the way the little gold flecks in them shone. 

He liked to be on his back, and he always watched me. I never understood why. I’m certainly no beauty. More than that, he always took the receptive position. I never understood that, either. I could scarcely imagine anything less pleasant, but I’d have done it for him. I even offered a few times, but he just laughed and shook his head, slicking me up and sliding me in. I loved to watch him do it. His hard, fierce eyes would drift shut and his lips would part, letting out the softest, most content sound, a kind of surprised, languorous sigh, like the sound a man will make at the sudden and complete removal of some nagging pain. He’d let me kiss him on the mouth then, even though he didn’t like it very much. His lips were soft and always chapped. I’d take advantage of those first few moments to feast on them before he’d rally enough to tilt his head and force my mouth to his neck, hissing his pleasure as I nipped and sucked at his white skin. I liked the feel of his pulse under my lips. That’s how I knew he trusted me, letting me that close to it, letting me feel it begin to race, fast and then faster. I suppose I loved him.

I remember the first time. It began over drinks on one of our Thursday evenings together, which had become something we both looked forward to in the months since I had been added to his organization. After an initial period of mutual distrust and aversion that is now strange to remember, we had warmed to each other slightly. I realized that while an ascetic, he was no bloodless coward, and he had found that I had a perfectly good mind, for all my baser nature. Short debriefings became longer and more friendly, and before I knew it I was stopping by more for the pleasure of his company than anything else, telling hunting stories, trying and failing to understand “On the Dynamics of an Asteroid” and looking at his vast and exquisite art collection and actually having my opinions taken into consideration.

Coming back to when our relationship changed its form again, it began with a simple request. He asked me to touch myself. I thought I had misheard, and then misunderstood him, languorous in front of the fire after several drinks. I think I only did it because he asked instead of ordering. Or maybe just because I had more whiskey in me than self-restraint, and no real reason not to oblige him. I turned my chair to face him, unbuttoning my lower garments and lazily stroking myself to hardness, my movements faster and more urgent as I went. He watched closely, hands folded in his lap, not making a sound. He only spoke when I was nearly spending, and I moved to cover my face.

“Look at me, Moran.” I did, and coated my hand as I stared into his eyes, my vision going grey at the edges. He was the first to move after a long moment, rising to pad over to me in those soft-soled slippers he always wore indoors. He knelt by my chair and took my fingers into his mouth, one by one, cleaning them. He lapped up every trace of my issue like a cat with cream, and then released my hand. “Thank you, Colonel.” I just stared as he stood and padded away like some great cat, coming back with a wet flannel. My gaze flicked to the placket of his trousers.

“Looking for a physical response?” He was obviously rock hard, but his voice was perfectly level.

I blinked, speaking in the thick, perfectly stupid voice that is always mine just after climax. “It certainly helps me understand your request.”

He chuckled, and handed me the flannel. “I enjoy watching you, Moran. In this or in anything else.” He watched as I cleaned myself, and I hissed a little at the feeling of the cloth on my spent, sensitized flesh. “You fascinate me.” I just grunted noncommittally, fastening my trousers with weak hands. “I trust I’ll see you again next Thursday?”

I nodded, standing on shaky legs and showing myself out. I dreamed of him that night, of white hands and a voice like silk dragging through sand, and woke up hard and in a foul temper the next morning.

Weeks went by before he asked again. I studied his face and was surprised to see the kind of fear that makes a tiger turn its head as it strikes. It’s a funny, backhanded kind of thing. The tiger is afraid, but the man it springs upon is done for. Of course, that moment is when you bag the stripe-coated bastard.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join me?”

“In what capacity?”

“I want to see you.”

“In a similar state to yourself, I presume?” He licked his dry lips, the tip of his tongue flicking out in a quick, lizard-like way.

“Absolutely.” I stared into his eyes and saw the pupils dilate into black pools. I knew I had him then. He breathed deeply as he unbuttoned his trousers, keeping those white hands steady through sheer force of will. I went to him and watched him shiver, his hand on his hardening cock. He looked at me. 

“And your half of the bargain, colonel?”

I perched on the arm of his chair, unbuttoning everything with perfect calm. Everyone had wondered how I’d been able to crawl down a drain after a wounded man-eater. They didn’t realize that I was never afraid of anything until after I had done it. He watched me, his hand barely moving, apparently more interested in seeing my flesh than touching his own. I worked it slowly, watching him watch me. 

He shivered. “Enough of these schoolboy diversions. Are you prepared to raise the stakes, Moran?”

“How high?” I grinned at him, and he offered one of his tight, serpentine smiles in return.

“High enough to adjourn to the bedroom.”

I slowly looked him up and down, studying him with an appreciative, insolent stare. “That sounds just about right.”

He raised an eyebrow and stood, arching his back and stretching his long, lithe frame. “Don’t think this will win you any special favors, colonel.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, professor.”

He smirked, unknotting his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, shrugging it off of his shoulders as he unfastened his cufflinks. “You know, Japanese garments don’t even have buttons.”

“Fascinating.” I watched him as I removed my own clothing. 

“They still manage to be as pointlessly complicated as our own, however.” Finally freed of his shirt, he peeled his trousers and stockings off, utterly unselfconscious. We left everything in a crumpled heap on the floor, and he led the way to his bedroom, a place I had never been. The bed was an old four-poster, vast and comfortable-looking, with deep green curtains. He crawled onto it and beckoned me to him, resting his hands on my chest and biting my neck. I growled and pinned him down, and he writhed under me, his hands mapping my body. I ground my hips against his and heard his raspy hiss of pleasure for the first time. I kissed him, and he jerked his head away in irritation. “A completely pointless caress, Moran.” He reached into his bedside drawer, pulling out a jar of Vaseline. I drew back at the sight of it, and he rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to bugger you.” He removed the lid and offered it to me. “I’ve never been much for preliminaries. Do not try my patience.”

I relaxed, having done this kind of thing before. I smeared the stuff over myself, and then reached for his cock. He pressed my hand down, and I blinked in sudden comprehension, smearing it over and around the opening before sliding my fingertip in. 

He snarled and wriggled impatiently, so I pressed three fingers as deep inside him as I could. He arched his back, gasping. “Oh... oh Christ, Moran...” I lifted and spread his legs, and slid into him. He sighed, shuddered and pressed his hips down, taking me as deep as he could, clenching around me as though to hold me there. I moaned and opened my eyes to find him staring up at me, looking utterly content. “Fuck me” he purred, and I shuddered, finding something almost unbearably delicious in the obscenity. As always when it came to Moriarty, I did as ordered, pounding him into the mattress. He was silent save for harsh gasps and occasional snarling cries, but he writhed on the sheets as if he was feeling it in every part of his body, his pale face flushed, clutching my shoulders hard enough to draw blood.

Feeling close to climax, I wrapped a hand around Moriarty’s prick and soon had him spending with a desperate groan. He contracted around me, almost painfully tight, and I cried out, following him over the precipice. I collapsed on him, coming to my senses to find him stroking my hair in a way that almost tender, his arms wrapped around me. “Always so fierce.” He murmured, gently fingering locks of my hair. “You put me in mind of a cat I once had. A rusty old tom with a bent ear. Black and orange.”

“Bloody glad my hair isn’t orange.” I muttered, nuzzling his neck. It was at once the strangest and the most natural thing in the world to be lying with him thus, listening to personal anecdotes from the Napoleon of crime. I kissed his neck, and he purred, wriggling happily under me. “So,” I had to ask, “are we ever going to do this again?”

“I am personally in favor, yes.” He stretched and sighed. “After all, this is quite pleasant, and I know you’re not foolish enough to presume upon it.”

I chuckled, gently biting. “Indeed.” 

He hissed softly, wrapping his arms around my neck. “I believe I forgot to ask earlier: what of the Crowne affair?”

I growled, remembering the frustration of having to walk away from a phenomenal profit with the eyes of at least five Scotland Yard inspectors boring into my back. “Had to leave it. Holmes had turned the bloody thing into a trap.”

He sat bolt upright, forcing me to roll off of him. “Damn him! That’s twice this year!” He leapt out of bed and snatched up his old green dressing gown, wrapping it around himself as he grabbed a cigar, slicing off the end with a sort of claw thing that he claimed was used as a torture device in China. “Moran, tell me everything.”

I sat up with the bedclothes pooled around my waist and told him everything I could remember, while he paced and smoked and cursed in Sanskrit. He was silent at the end of my recital, and then he hissed thoughtfully, staring at the ceiling before he looked down at me. “What of our business concerning the Mazarin stone?”

“I don’t think he’s tumbled to that one. If I were in your place, I’d step it up, though. No one would expect something else so soon.”

Moriarty chuckled. “Not even he.” He sat at the edge of the bed, blowing a smoke ring. “At least that Crowne business wasn’t as important to me as it might have been.” He leaned back, using me as a sort of couch and offering me his cigar. I took a pull on it as he went on. “It wasn’t meant to be a diversion, but it may serve as one all the same.”

“I see. Should I get Phipps to keep lurking about?”

“Yes.” He took the cigar back. “As ominously as possible. Tell him not to worry about being obvious. It’s back in Scotland Yard’s hands, and even if they do manage to catch him, we’ll have him free within a week.”

I nodded, feeling very sleepy and stupid, but still willing to commit orders to memory. I yawned, and he looked at me and chuckled. “I seem to have worn you out, old fellow.” He touched my face, and I nuzzled his hand. It was as always, cool, dry, and curiously soothing. It seemed as though I only closed my eyes for a moment, but when I opened them it was broad day. I sat up, blinking and disoriented. I was alone and naked, but my clothes were neatly folded on a chair beside the bed. Resting atop the pile was a note in Moriarty’s neat, rounded handwriting. 

Moran ---  
There is a razor in the lavatory, and a plate of sandwiches on the sitting room table. I should be glad to see you next Thursday.  
\--- M.

I read it, tossed it into the grate, and got dressed. He was as good as his word, and after breakfasting on the sandwiches, I left. And I did see him on Thursday. And the week after that, and the week after that, and so on. Sometimes he pounced on me as soon as I came through the door, pinning me to the wall and sinking his teeth into my neck. On other occasions, he was tremendously civilized, teasing me all through dinner and drinks until I could no longer stand it, sweeping the table clear and dragging him onto it, buttons flying as I tore off his clothes. Despite his complaints about broken china, I think he may have liked those times best.

After a few months, we were no longer limiting ourselves to Thursdays, or evenings. I found that if anything, I wanted him more in the morning, when the sunlight would make his bookish pallor into a celestial glow and he was sleepy and completely relaxed, like a cat in a sunbeam. I would roll onto him, earning either a chuckle or a soft growl, and take him slowly, savoring every moment.

He often got his best ideas in the morning, lounging with his head resting on my chest, long fingers tracing patterns on my skin. On one of our first mornings together he rolled onto his back, staring meditatively at the ceiling. “I know exactly how to use Porlock’s talents, now.” He turned to kiss my shoulder. “Moran, I believe you help me think.”

I merely grunted and muttered, “Glad I’m good for something” and burrowed deeper into the blankets. He laughed, sliding out and wrapping himself in a dressing gown, padding away as I drifted off again.

Sherlock Holmes began to seriously incommode us in the next year. What had begun as a bit of a game between them became a deadly struggle. More and more often, our plans were foiled, leaving Moriarty pacing his rooms and tearing his hair out in vexation. He was magnificent when he was angry. His incredible mind fairly crackled under the stimulus, and his eyes almost seemed to glow. He would spin plan after plan, each one cleverer than the last, cursing sulfurously all the while. 

Sometimes that fury was turned on me, and he would berate me as a fool and a useless drunkard, shrieking like a fishwife in the extremity of his frustration. I never struck him, though God knows I wanted to. I think I was afraid of his wrath, and afraid to really hurt him. For all his convulsive strength and agility, I could have killed him, so I stayed my hand as best I could, turning it to my surroundings instead, breaking things and letting fly a few choice insults of my own until he ordered me out.

He would generally come and find me days later in some public house. I should have lost all respect for either of us had we ever apologized to one another. He would just say, “Moran, I need you.” settle my bill and drag me home with him, installing me in his bed and waiting impatiently for me to sober up.

I don’t know how many men I shot for him during that trying time. Some simple targets, some members of our organization that had given the game away. I have always enjoyed the hunt. Tigers and men each have their own challenges and rewards. Crawling down drains and hunkering in the bushes is all very well, but there is no thrill on earth quite like mingling with the teeming mass of humanity that is London with a disassembled air rifle hidden in one’s coat. Best of all of course, was the look on Moriarty’s face when I would return victorious. He was never a tender man, but he would curl up in my lap, for all the world like a purring cat, and demand that I tell him all about it, the vicarious excitement bringing rare color to his pale cheeks.

Gradually, Moriarty began to turn Holmes’s game around on him, hunting him back through London with vicious satisfaction. He would burst in upon me at the oddest times, glowing and eager to recount the terrible things he had just done to his adversary. His master stroke was to threaten Dr. Watson. He said that Holmes had gone as white as a sheet, despite his best efforts towards perfect equanimity. The best part of course, was that Holmes hadn’t the evidence to involve Scotland Yard in anything but the most peripheral actions against our organization.

Of course, there was at least one London copper that suspected Moriarty of something other than the straight and narrow. Victor Robinson, lately risen to the rank of Inspector. I saw a lot of him, because he was bound and determined to observe us, using personal time to do so, for his superiors would not believe that Moriarty was anything more than an academic. He was not the master of disguise that he thought he was, and his gangling frame became a fixture in our lives, peering at us from the heart of crowds and over fencetops, always certain of his invisibility.

If Robinson’s colleagues hadn’t become convinced of his mental derangement, he probably would never have been a danger to us. Unfortunately, Robinson really was close to madness, his obsession with both of us reaching such a point that it was generally decided that he needed quiet rest at home for a while. This unhinged him completely. He disappeared from sight for a few days, and then reemerged as a desperate man. 

I was in Moriarty’s sitting room when the maid showed Robinson up. The girl was trying not to tremble with fear, and I could scarcely blame her. He was obviously mad. I was unofficially living with Moriarty at that point, and was doing my best to amuse myself while he worked on equations that I could not begin to comprehend, wrapped in a dressing gown and curled in my usual chair by the hearth.

“Moran.” Robinson grinned at me as the maid left, and I could tell that he really had gone mad. There is a kind of bright, terrible glimmer in a man’s eyes when he has gone beyond sanity, and I saw it in Robinson then. It was no surprise to glance down and a see that he had a revolver trained on me.

“I didn’t want it to come to this. Wanted to do the thing right.” He ran his hand through his hair, obviously distracted. I quietly slipped one hand into my pocket. “Moriarty.” He crooned, “I don’t care about you. I just need him.”

“I see.” My fingers curled around the butt of my gun. “You understand that you’ll have to kill me first.”

His lips curled back from his teeth in a savage snarl. “I should be far more than happy to.”

Before I had brought my own gun more than halfway up, a shot rang out and he dropped to the floor. I turned to see Moriarty calmly blowing the acrid smoke from the barrel of his revolver. “While I have no real need of your protection, Colonel, the sentiment is very much appreciated.” He pocketed the gun and padded over, rolling our opponent’s corpse over with one slippered toe. “Ah. This should be no trouble at all. We shan’t even have to hide him. Follow my lead.”

As he spoke, I could hear the maid’s running footsteps. He quickly handed me the gun, and then slumped into a chair as though his legs would no longer support him, trembling pitifully.

“Professor?” She burst in, wide-eyed and terrified, brandishing a cast-iron skillet and obviously prepared to brain someone with it.

“It’s all right.” His soft, controlled voice was tremulous now, catching in his throat in a way that made him sound near tears. He shivered, looking away from the body. “Colonel Moran shot in self-defense. Please, call the police.”

“Oh, you poor lamb. . . Colonel, please take care of him.” I nodded, and she dropped a quick curtsey. “Thank you, sir.” She ran off down the stairs.

Once she was gone, I raised an eyebrow, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “A brandy, you poor, dear man?”

He chuckled, stretching. “And one for yourself, sir.” I poured the drinks and handed him one. He sighed, swirling the snifter. “God, that rug he’s bleeding on is worth more than these rooms. It can’t be helped, I suppose.”

“My mother always said that cold salt-water was the best thing for blood.”

He sighed. “Even if it is salvageable, I can’t keep it. What ‘bloodless, shrinking bookworm’ could bear to look at it after this?”

I coughed, sitting down beside him. “I told you I was sorry about calling you that.”

He leaned against me. “I know.” He smiled, touching the bruise on my cheek. “And the way you came to my defense was very gallant.”

I kissed his hand. “Well, I am fond of you. . .” I would have gone on to see if his mood would permit a real kiss, but we were interrupted by Scotland Yard’s finest. They poured into the room, led by a dark little man who immediately knelt beside the body, looking as though he wanted to cry.

“Robinson. . .” He closed the corpse’s eyes, and looked at the dead face with sorrowful tenderness before standing. He turned to me, offering a tiny, calloused hand for me to shake. “Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard. Please, give me your account of the matter, as the professor appears to be in no condition to do so.” I looked over to see Moriarty tipped over in one of the best faints I’ve ever seen. And this is coming from someone whose closest school chum was a past master at faking them. I dashed over to him, all solicitude. Lestrade gestured to one of the constables, who handed me some smelling salts. The look on his face when I put the salts under his nose almost made me laugh, but I managed to keep an appropriately grim expression. He recoiled, breathing out through his nose in the quick, sharp way of a disgusted cat. He sat up and gave his statement, still trembling, shielding his eyes from the body with the same graceful hand that had cradled the scarred butt of the revolver. His face hidden from the police, he winked at me, green eyes glittering with joyful wickedness. It was all I could do not to laugh.

I pinned him to the table as soon as they left, biting his neck and kissing his hands, sucking his trigger finger into my mouth as he laughed and half-heartedly tried to push me away. “You fiend! You utter, utter fiend!” I bit the ball of his thumb. “What would you have done if I had really started to laugh?”

He laughed breathlessly, fingertips stroking my cheek. “Nerves. A slight breakdown now that the worst is over, my darling.” On the endearment, he dug his nails into the tender skin just below my ear, just to let me know that he meant it, but that I must not ever bring it up. I took him there, before the blood on the carpet was dry.

Of course it all ended at Reichenbach. Moriarty was half-crazed by then, with Holmes’s decisive action against the organization. There was nothing left but the two of us. The two of us and that last bed I ever shared with him. I suppose his death can be partially laid at my door, but I refuse to take anything like all the blame. If he hadn’t been so consumed with the need to confront Holmes face to face, I could have picked him off the mountainside hours before that fateful meeting. Holmes and his little friend, so easily fobbed off with a false message. What I will blame myself for is being too great a coward to shoot. They were so closely entwined, and I was too afraid to hit the only man I suppose I’ll ever love.

Naturally, Holmes hurled him over the edge. His shriek still rings in my dreams more nights than not. After I lost track of Holmes that night, I climbed all the way down to the river, dragging and probing and searching for days on end. I found the battered and silt-encrusted remains of his watch, and that is all. I have it still, a poor keepsake, but the only one I shall ever have. It traveled with me all across the Continent, always one step behind the clever bastard. He was smart enough to let Watson think he was dead, knowing, I’m sure, that I would have found the good doctor and his charming wife and cut bits from them until they gave me everything I needed to know. The very thought of doing so and seeing the look on Holmes’s face when he found out sustained me through many a night.

By the time Ronald Adair died, I had slunk back to London, waiting for Holmes. I knew he couldn’t stay away forever. Watson was always his one real weakness. As a matter of fact, during my gallingly unsuccessful attempts to kill him before the Reichenbach affair, one of my gambits had been to send him a letter outlining Watson’s day to day activities with such minuteness that he knew I had been watching the bastard. It drove him to utter distraction, and was in all probability the final spur which brought him to Switzerland.

I later read Dr. Watson’s account of the thing, and was unsurprised to find that he had either covered up Adair’s real sins, or his master had simply never seen fit to enlighten him. The idea that I should have killed him over cards is laughable. I have gone through life winning and losing and killing, and it is with some authority that I say that losing at cards does not justify killing unless your opponent was cheating, and Adair didn’t need to. He was only any good for two things, and cards was one of them. The other was a spot of aristocratic information-brokering. He turned evidence against us to save his own baby-soft skin. He was a traitor, and the only thing I regret about his death was that it allowed Holmes to turn the game back on me. 

By the time I shot Ronald Adair, I had given up on Holmes. No one can disappear as completely as he did for the last year of those three. I had returned home, if the word could be applied to a place so without profit or interest. My first act upon reentering the capital of the Empire was to get drunk. Liquor has always been one of my principle vices. I had not realized how much having a purpose had kept it back. I never knew when Moriarty would need me sober, and then I never knew when I might find signs of Holmes, or Sigerson, or Sherringford all across the Continent. But now, I had nothing but time and grief. And then I woke up one afternoon, and started sending out feelers for information. I still had contacts enough to find out who had turned on us, and it was with this hunt that I filled my days. It was a sweet thing to stalk through London with my air rifle again. Sweeter still to kill the men I truly blamed for all that had happened. Holmes’s persistence was nothing without their treachery, and my cowardice above the Falls was only forced into being by what had come before.

The story of how this spree ended is a well-known one. I have to admit, Dr. Watson has a certain way with narrative, and his description of me was at least somewhat accurate. Of course, it was Lestrade who took me in hand. He had deep lines under his eyes, but otherwise looked very much as I had first seen him. His little hands were calloused from shooting practice, and were working hard not to snatch up some weapon to end me right there. I was too shattered to make any reply to the one thing he said to me that wasn’t a legal formality. He was a little hoarse, and I could hear the faint remnants of an East End accent as he said “Victor Robinson was a good man, you miserable bastard.” As if my dead mother’s honor mattered at a time like that. I just let them lead me around, biddable as a cow. I had come to the end quite suddenly, like a fuse that sparks and races along, then fizzles out short of its destination. All my will and purpose had gone up in a quiet puff of smoke, and nothing mattered.

They put me away for a while. I didn’t mind. It was dark, and cool, and I generally went unmolested. I didn’t want to eat. Or to sleep, even. I just lay on my bunk in a state of suspended animation. I was going to be hanged, and I did not care in the slightest. I was the calmest I have ever been in all my life. I am not given to calm, contemplation, or silence. My rages are legendary, my joys complete, and my sorrows keenly felt. But in that cell, after all that had happened to me, I was calm. I had nothing to live for, nothing to lose, and no reason to care. I felt bodiless, and my memories of that time are perfectly clear, as are my memories of the dreams I had during the worst of my tropical fevers.

I honestly do not think that a white man can will himself to die. I have seen it done by the natives of India and all its surrounding environs, but in that empty and quiet part of my life, if I could have done the thing by will alone, I should have been dead. I was almost too filled with lassitude to look up when I heard sawing at the bars one night. But for all that, I was still alive, and as the sound gradually penetrated my consciousness, I felt compelled to take an interest. I stood on weak legs, and tottered over to the window. I did not recognize the industrious filer in the dark, but I asked him, “What exactly is it you’re trying to do?”

“Free you, sir.”

“I couldn’t get my head out that window.”

“Oh no, sir. It’s so I can get a hand in.” I stared at him blankly, and he began to sound slightly unnerved. “Explosives, sir. Blow this wall out at the same time the other lads create a diversion, and you’ll be out and away in two shakes.”

“Who sent you?”

“The professor, sir.”

“He’s dead.”

“He told me you would say that, sir, and sent a token with me.” He pressed something through the bars. I caught it, and held it close to my eyes in the dim light. A gear. Tiny and glittering, I recognized it as one of the missing pieces of his watch. It was dented, but I could still see the peculiar way the teeth had been made according to Moriarty's own principles of efficiency. A slip of paper had been wrapped around it, and I noticed writing on it after a moment. I barely managed to read it in the darkness. 

Moran ---  
\--Sometimes the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts.  
\--- M.

I stood there staring like a fool for so long that the boy had to warn me back, his task nearly completed. I moved, still staring at Moriarty’s missive. It was his hand. The words were his. The gear was his. Even the paper was the sort he favored. I scented it like a dog, and found that it did indeed smell like him, this realization choking me with unshed tears. I stuffed it in my pocket, and braced myself for the blast, which was cataclysmic, stones raining down as the air filled with dust and sand. I was running before the smoke cleared.

Moriarty’s plans were always good, so I made it into a carriage and down to the docks, hustled into the basement of an opium den and was quickly stripped to the skin by several dexterous chinamen who reassured me in thick and broken English as they redressed me and packed me off into a bolt hole that lead out to the Thames. I hurried along, my state the polar opposite of my former lassitude, but just as mindless. My body operated on its own, sidestepping pools of slime and the points of broken beams, loping along as fast as running. I had no sense of time anymore, and I have no idea how long the journey took me. I was Moriarty’s tool again, animated from without by his will and drawn along inexorably.

I emerged like Lazarus from the tomb, standing in a pool of shadows by that filthy water. I didn’t have a weapon, didn’t have the strength to make my body act as one, and I had no idea where I was. That single moment was probably my moment of greatest faith. I couldn’t vouch for God, but the James Moriarty I knew had never let me down. Nor did he start then. A couple of coolies sprang out of nowhere and hustled me into a rowboat. They made signs to show that they didn’t have any English, and we were all silent as they paddled out onto the filthy river. They were thick, sullen-faced men, and in almost no time at all they were heaving me onto a ship. I stood on the deck, looking around. 

“You come now.” The voice was sudden in the fog. I had to squint to see that it belonged to a tiny little fellow who took my elbow in a grip of iron, and steered me to the main cabin. I didn’t much like it when he pushed me in ahead of him, but the door was shut before I could argue the point. There wasn’t much light, but it made me blink after the tunnel and the riverbank. I squinted, and saw a figure stretched out on the bed. As my vision cleared, I recognized Moriarty.

“Well, fancy meeting you here.” I had to swallow three times before I could speak, and my voice came out far huskier than I wanted it.

“Indeed.” He stretched out a hand and beckoned me. I went to him, and dropped to my knees beside the bed. We had never been sentimental, but I would have had to have a heart of stone not to take his hand in both my own and kiss it, murmuring “Oh, your poor hand” like some besotted nursemaid when I saw that the little finger was gone. He chuckled, and stroked my hair. 

“There’s a great deal more than that, but your concern is appreciated. Now come up and kiss me.”

I crawled up beside him, and made some noise of concern and dismay when I saw the twisted way he was lying. I paused to investigate, and saw that his left leg was all lumpy at the knee, and shorter than the other. His hips were at a canted angle, and I touched him cautiously. I’m no doctor, but I could tell that his spine had been twisted. I stared for a long moment.

“Moran.” His voice was impatient, with a note of nervousness that probably only I would have noticed. “Wipe your eyes and kiss me. It may be a completely pointless caress, but it’s all I’ve wanted for three years, damn you.”

I hadn’t noticed my tears as they had welled up, and wiped my eyes with my sleeve before I leaned down to kiss him, cradling his head in my hands. The feel of his prickly hair against my palms, the shape of his skull, the taste of him, his scent, and his permanently chapped lips were exactly as I remembered. His thin arms wrapped around me, dragging me down. He wanted my weight, and I gave it to him. He may have lost a finger, but the way his nails sank into my back was just the same. Neither of us had ever been much for this kind of thing. This long, languorous mingling of breath and warmth, both of us doing nothing more than simply being together.

“How?” I finally asked, whispering against the soft spot just under his ear.

“I have no idea. I've calculated the velocity and the angles over a thousand times, and the only answer I can find. . .” He paused, and I looked up at him in time to see his smile, the faintest shadow of an expression. “Is that I couldn’t leave this world without you.” His hand wound into my hair.

“Rank sentiment.” I whispered, my throat tight.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Three years, Professor.”

“Two and a half were spent learning to walk again. The last six months were spent regaining capital and manpower.”

“Two and a half years.” I murmured, amazed.

“Yes. Walking is painful, but at least I still possess the ability.”

“That bastard Holmes!” I hissed, enraged. My hands dug into the blanket as a thousand plans of vengeance passed before my eyes.

Moriarty held up a hand to keep me from saying anything else. “Won through my own stupidity.” He cupped my chin in one hand, looking into my eyes. “I should have just let you shoot him. As such, I think of him as the better man.” He stretched, and sighed, idly stroking my hair. “Besides, they’ve made Britain too hot to hold us, Colonel.” He smiled again, the lazy, dangerous smile he employed when he was plotting. “How does China sound?”

As I lay there and listened to the water against the hull, I thought that China sounded perfect.


End file.
